I'm back...and relatively healthy

I was hoping that be changing my Avatar soon, but since we had another snowstorm yesterday I guess I won't. On that note, yesterday, Good Friday and the second day of SPRING, it took me an hour to drive to my gig because of snow (it normally takes 26-28 minutes) - I'm glad I left extra early. Still, it's Easter and snowing!

This week's been all about keeping up and staying healthy. Last Thursday I'd taken that sick day to try to keep myself from getting really sick. While I still had to take cough medicine and Sudafed, the worst of it held off until Sunday night, which was good as I had a Techny quartet gig Sunday morning. Monday I was pretty bad, but didn't realize it until I was at work. I decided to stay there and finish the day because, well, once you've done the hour and a half one way commute you try to stay for the whole day as a matter of principle. I have my own small office, too, so I didn't feel as bad staying at work sick because I feel like it's more contained that way. Tuesday I stayed home and by mid-afternoon was much better. Thank God for sick days.

Wednesday was Ok, and I held up through our last opera of the season Wednesday night. Thursday and Friday I'd already put in for half days because of services I was singing. Holy Week was supposed to be Techny quartet for Palm Sunday, Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter, but it ended up getting cut on Thursday because of budget reasons - brass at Techny was cut for Easter, too. Anyway, I ended up at my other church for Thursday (and will be there for Easter Vigil this evening), which allowed me to ease back in and make sure I didn't sound too bad after being sick and still not being back to 100%.

As luck would have it, I ended up cantoring Thursday night because the person who was supposed to was getting over strep - I hadn't warmed up nearly enough because I didn't know I was cantoring until I got there so the entrance hymn was rough sounding but the rest of the service was Ok. I got through yesterday relatively well, too.

I think that after this week I can lay to rest any qualms I had about calling myself a true professional singer. I think the fact that it's been years since I've gotten this sick because I've always taken steps to prevent it is testament to that, but even more is that I've still made it through all of my gigs just fine. Sure, I'm not sounding as glorious as I'd like to, but in the one place the people really don't know any different, and in the other place I have the acoustic to help me out and I know how to do that.

Anyway, that's enough for now - I'll write more next week. Happy Easter all!